Islamist militants have declared an Islamic "caliphate" in an
area straddling Iraq and Syria, trumpeting the declaration in several videos.
One slick video, mostly in English, features a bearded fighter with an AK-47 on his back, explaining the new caliphate.
"This is not the first border we will break, we will break other borders," a jihadist from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis)
warned in the video called End of Sykes-Picot, a reference to the
agreement between France and Britain that divided up the Ottoman empire
territories after the first world war.
Later the fighter pledges that jihadists will free Palestine. "We are
not here to replace an Arab cahoot with a western cahoot. Rather our
jihad is more lofty and higher. We are fighting to make the word of
Allah the highest," the spokesman said.
He is filmed showing abandoned Iraqi
army badges and vehicles left by fleeing soldiers. "There is no army in
the world that can withstand the soldiers of Islam," he said.
The video features about a dozen men in a cell said to be captured
troops and border police. A building, said to be a police station, is
shown being blown up, as well as US-made Humvees captured from the
border police. "Look how much America spends to fight Islam, and it ends
up just being in our pockets," the spokesman taunted.
Isis,
a breakaway group from al-Qaida, is notable for its hardline anti-Shia
sectarianism, declaring Shia Muslims and other rivals as heretics that
deserve death.
Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, an Isis spokesman, defined the Islamic state's territory as running from northern Syria to the Iraqi province of Diyala north-east of Baghdad, a vast stretch of land straddling the border that is already largely under Isis
control. He also said that with the establishment of the caliphate, the
group was changing its name to the Islamic State, dropping the mention
of Iraq and the Levant.
"The legality of all emirates, groups, states and organisations becomes
null by the expansion of the caliph's authority and the arrival of its
troops to their areas," he said in an audio statement posted online, AP
reported. "Listen to your caliph and obey him. Support your state, which
grows every day."
Adnani said the group's chief, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is the leader of
the new caliphate and called on Muslims everywhere, not just those in
areas under the organisation's control, to swear loyalty to him.
Baghdadi has been disowned by al-Qaida's leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri,
after al-Baghdadi ignored al-Zawahiri's demands that the Islamic State
leave Syria.
Another video called Breaking of the Borders showed Isis fighters killing Iraqi border guards, Reuters reported.
Meanwhile, the Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said Islamic State
fighters crucified eight men said to be rival rebel fighters in the town
square of Deir Hafer in Syria's Aleppo province on Saturday as a warning to others.
An analyst said the declaration of a caliphate by the Islamic State posed a huge challenge to al-Qaida.
"Put simply, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has declared war on al-Qaida," said
Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Centre. "While
it is now inevitable that members and prominent supporters of al-Qaida
and its affiliates will rapidly move to denounce Baghdadi and this
announcement, it is the long-term implications that may prove more
significant.
"Taken globally, the younger generation of the jihadist community is becoming more supportive of Isis, largely out of fealty to its slick and proven capacity for attaining rapid results through brutality."
The Islamic State's declaration came as the Iraqi government tries to claw back some of the territory gained by the jihadists and disaffected Sunnis.
On Sunday, Iraqi
helicopter gunships struck suspected insurgent positions for a second
consecutive day in the northern city of Tikrit, the predominantly Sunni
hometown of former dictator Saddam Hussein. The insurgents appeared to
have repelled the military's initial push and remain in control of the
city.
Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has voiced support for
Kurdish statehood, calling for the establishment of an independent
Kurdistan as part of a broader alliance with moderate forces across the
region. The US, however, has said Iraq should stand together in the face of Isis and other jihadists